Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Ice Pillar

I bought the Ice Pillar from Pelikan well over a year ago and promptly forgot about it until I recently found it in the deep recesses of my puzzle cupboard. I had even forgotten what the name of this puzzle was and who designed it, and had to trace my emails with Pelikan way back to early 2013.

Ice Pillar is constructed from Bubinga for the frame and Zebrano for the 4 burr pieces. Quality of build is top-notch. Surprisingly, the pieces have a very loose fit in the frame, even after a few days out of my de-humidified cupboard. This is the first time I have a wooden puzzle that didn't lock up due to the humidity. Shape-wise, Ice Pillar is like a short Tall Joe. Similar with a "+" cross-section sort of shape, very different from the typical cuboid burrs.Ice Pillar is from Osanori Yamamoto and I am not sure if its just me lousy, or this one is really tough....well, its both! The Ice Pillar requires nearly 40 moves to completely disassemble. With some of Yamamoto designs, usually I can make some sort of progress but for this puzzle, I just couldn't find my way anywhere.

Being of such loose fit, all the pieces could slide left right up down too easily...nothing was ever stuck, but nothing ever came out of the frame either. Tried as I did, I made no headway and had to resort to the solution provided by Pelikan. At least Allard managed to take it apart without any help. I didn't bother to try reassembly, knowing full well it would be futile; instead I generated a Burr Tools solution to see how the puzzle worked. Amazing, and just as fun, as always!